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Personal Note Archive December 2007

1st December 2007

There have always been people who haven't liked the government. There was a time when this was a crime. Today democracies have institutionalised opposition into the day to day business of government. This is a way to allow opposition, and a way to control what has always been a looming threat of instability. Queen Elizabeth the First had a very interesting attitude to her position as queen. She refused to marry and have a child, and stubbornly resisted all attempts to persuade her to nominate a successor. Not only did Elizabeth forbid opposition, she couldn't even admit that anyone else would ever follow her as king or queen of England. It's almost as if she felt that she and her age would live forever. Elizabeth was the one and only. The people of her time seemed to follow her lead in feeling special. Sailors ranged across the oceans opening up new worlds. In London the greatest works of English literature were being performed on stage in front of cheering crowds. Elizabeth was the first monarch to give her name to an age, a fitting memorial to a queen who wanted to cram all remaining history, as Shakespeare said, "within this wooden O" of her own time. Every age in a sense does this, wanting to find completeness in its own little part of things. Today we value "diversity" and have wisely institutionalised opposition. But all the groups whose diversity we value in fact exist to confer a sense of togetherness to their members. In many ways people get into exclusive little groups because they prefer wholeness to diversity. They like to think that their own place and time is the only one, just as Elizabeth did. Read more...

 

 

9th Decenber 2007

When I was young people worried about Christmas being too commercialised. Now the worry seems to be that Christmas is too religious. In these socially sensitive times Christmas might turn into a kind of neutral midwinter festival. From an historical point of view there has never really been anything neutral about Christmas. From later Roman times three European festivals were taking place around the time of Christmas: these were the Saturnalia, which began on the 17th of December and continued to the 24th; the Kalends on the 1st of January; and the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun, on December the 25th. Both Saturnalia and Kalends required that buildings were brightly lit and decorated with evergreens. Presents were given and greetings exchanged. The festivities marking the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun required candles and fires. There is little doubt that the mid-winter holiday was deliberately chosen by early Christians as the time for a Nativity feast. The idea was to assimilate pagan traditions into Christianity rather than attempting the hopeless task of suppressing them. So Christmas has a long history of being involved in struggles between different religions. What might be reassuring about all this is the similarity in the midwinter traditions of all these competing faiths. Winter festivals of light are found all over the world. Lights are lit and presents are given in the dark and difficult winter months, when it becomes more important than ever to help each other out. Read more...

 

27th December 2007

The New Year will begin at midnight on the 31st of December at Greenwich. The story of how the Prime Meridian came to run through Greenwich is a story that involves shipwrecks, astronomy, clock making, naval power, and the Industrial Revolution. It is a story essentially of finding a home port for the world's ships, from which they could measure their journeys east and west around the globe. This home port could have been been anywhere, and actually was located in a number of different places, before finally coming to rest at Greenwich. Read more...